Shot over to the Montebellos last week for 5 days what an awesome place.

A mate drove up from Perth and met me at my place on the thursday(paraburdoo) we left para at 4am on Friday to head to dampier arrived by 9.30 fueled up and hit the water by 10am. We cruised over at 22knots conditions were pretty awesome there were whales everywhere it took us 3 hours to get to the islands and we used 105 litres of fuel. We spent the afternoon cruising around found a bay to camp in on Bluebell and spent the rest of the day unloading the boat re fuelling and setting up camp and a couple quiet beers.

Day 2 we woke to magic conditions we cruised out the west side through a gap in the reef and started sounding around I was lucky enough that a mate give me a couple of spots to sound around so we looked for a bit of action on the sounder which didn't take long then it was non stop action for most of the day we fished in 15m to start with then out to around 35m and some great fish caught the number of coral trout caught was incredible I had to put the jigs away as it was almost a trout every drop and they were averaging around 75cm so it was good fun the reds were only interested in bait. We forgot to take lots of pics as the action was so good but managed a couple.

Day 3 was much the same as day 2 but the fishing was a bit slower really only on the bite an hour either side of the high tide but still plenty of fish caught and released.

Day 4 the wind picked up considerably it was very hard to drift as the tide and wind were the same direction still managed a few fish due to the wind we thought we better check the forecast for the next couple of days so later that day we had a look and it wasn't easing up so we decided we would cut the trip a day short as it was better wind direction to travel back in on day 5 rather then day 6.

Day 5 we packed up camp loaded the boat up and had a cruise around the islands while jumping in the water having a free dive on some of the coral bombies. The coral colours are amazing and the marine life is superb. Some huge cray fish around and some massive cod we didn't spear anything as we had our fish limits for the trip. Once we were out of the island group we thought we would have one more fish before heading back to dampier so we found some flair ups just past the gas pipe line and had a quick jig session with a few fish raised but there were a lot of sharks around. We could see plenty of dolphin fish but couldn't hook any. So it was 1pm so we thought we better start the journey back it was a fairly strong sw wind but still managed to comfortably cruise at 18knots back at dampier ramp by 4.30

A huge thanks to all members who helped me with some info it made doing the trip so much easier with the knowledge before hand. 

We travelled 250nm and used 360litres of fuel. I took over 500 litres as i thought I would use 150 litres to get there and have 50lt a day to use but the economy didn't change much at all being fully loaded. I have a 6.5m pacemaker with a 250hp mercruiser.

I can't wait to do the trip again.

Cheers 

Rod

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